Where'd You Go, Bernadette

A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this "whip-smart and divinely funny" novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett (New York Times).

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle -- and people in general -- has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence -- creating a compulsively readable and surprisingly touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

Author: Maria Semple
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 04/02/2013
Pages: 330
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.7lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780316204262

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.4
Point Value: 13
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 161015 / Where'd You Go, Bernadette


Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 05/12/2013 pg. 40
Entertainment Weekly 05/31/2013 pg. 103
People Weekly 08/26/2013 pg. 49
Entertainment Weekly 10/25/2013 pg. 103
Entertainment Weekly 03/21/2014 pg. 67

About the Author
Maria Semple is the author of This One Is Mine and Today Will Be Different. Before turning to fiction, she wrote for Mad About You, Ellen, and Arrested Development. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker. She lives in Seattle.